“Everyone knows young people these days are born with smartphones in hand and will stay glued to the Internet from that time onward. Right?

Well, not quite. Actually, fewer than one-third of young people around the world are “digital natives,” according to a report published Monday and billed as the first comprehensive global look at the phenomenon.

The study, conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the International Telecommunication Union, shows that only 30 percent of people ages 15 to 24 have spent at least five years actively using the Internet, the criterion used to define digital nativism.” READ MORE[1]

“For our Philippine case study, we conducted interviews with members of the following groups: staff at transparency NGOs, journalists who have covered procurement, and member organizations representing business interests. Our conversations with these respondents have allowed us to develop a diverse and comprehensive picture of how transparency, information communication technology (ICT) and civil society engagement in public procurement has impacted accountability.” READ MORE[2]

“As much as we online journalists love reports that rank things, even we must sometimes resist the urge to blog about them, even "in one map." Because honestly, some countries are just going to either be really good or bad at various things for the foreseeable future. Just as the Central African Republic is not going to be the best country for women within our lifetime, you'll probably never see a Scandinavian nation on a "failed states" slideshow.

Freedom House's annual Freedom on the Net report is out, and like in most such reports, the actual rankings are largely unsurprising. Iceland, the frozen whistleblower nirvana, ranked first, and second was Estonia, the tiny Baltic country that gave us Skype. China, Cuba, and Iran came in last, obviously.” READ MORE[3]

“The MIS report, which has been published annually since 2009, features two benchmarking tools to measure the information society: the ICT Development Index (IDI) and the ICT Price Basket (IPB). The 2012 IDI captures the level of ICT developments in 157 economies worldwide and compares progress made during the last year. The 2012 IPB combines the consumer prices for (fixed and mobile) telephone and Internet broadband services for 161 economies into one measure and compares these across countries, and over time.” READ MORE[4]

“When Marguerite Sullivan started the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) in 2007, she said she faced skepticism as to whether the U.S.-based organization could help advance media development worldwide.

But since its launch, CIMA, which is part of the National Endowment for Democracy, has been helping independent news outlets and foundations navigate the ever-shifting media landscape through in-depth reports on media research, by creating a bibliographic database of resources related to international media assistance and by mapping digital media around the world. (Disclosure: CIMA is a partner of IJNet, where this post originally appeared.)” READ MORE[5]

“Information technology transfer is increasingly a crucial element of development and humanitarian aid initiatives. Social protection programmes are incorporating digitized Management Information Systems and electronic transfers, registration and electoral systems are deploying biometric technologies, the proliferation of mobile phones is facilitating access to increased amounts of data, and technologies are being transferred to support security and rule of law efforts. Many of these programmes and technologies involve the surveillance of individuals, groups, and entire populations. The collection and use of personal information in these development and aid initiatives is without precedent, and subject to few legal safeguards. In this report we show that as development and humanitarian donors and agencies rush to adopt new technologies that facilitate surveillance, they may be creating and supporting systems that pose serious threats to individuals’ human rights, particularly their right to privacy.” READ MORE [6]